sodapop at the edge of the world
by youremyqueen
Summary: Three murders and a suicide, and coffee enough for all four.


**notes: **i honestly just really wanted there to be a fic about all four of them interacting, because they're my favorites, and while i'm sure there is somewhere, i couldn't find it. the writing here is questionable and it's all self-indulgent wish fulfillment and so i'm sorry if it's not very readable, or just doesn't make sense. thank you for reading!

* * *

**one.**

There's a hot wind coming off the coast and it rushes bright orange through the diner's slatted windows, making B's bangs tickle his forehead and his temples drip sweat. He'd ordered a coffee, _hot and fresh!_, the way the sign with the smiling housewife proclaims it, and with every sip he wonders if the weather is nicer in hell.

He's alone at the booth, but he doesn't think he will be for long.

"Keep them coming," he tells the waitress, lifting his mug in salute, then sits back to wait for a while.

* * *

**two.**

When L gets in it's cold like the desert night, deep blue shadows carving concave shapes in the planes of his face.

"That took longer than expected," B says, sliding his half empty, lukewarm cup of coffee across the table. "What held you?"

L doesn't look surprised to see him, just glances around at the dingy accommodations and shrugs, sitting down. "Just a little matter of life and death," he says flippantly, playing the role even now, at this time of night, "nothing major." He picks up a sticky menu, palming its crinkled edges. "So, what's good here?"

B shrugs, shoulders pointing jaggedly in opposite directions, sinews bending in ways they shouldn't. "Don't know. I was waiting for the whole party before I ordered."

"Learned manners recently?" L asks, flagging down the waitress and ordering a heaping stack of pancakes.

"I had a lot of free time without you. Enough to practice my _hellos_ and _goodbyes_ and _I love yous_."

"And?" L asks, prodding, as the waitress brings them another mug, filling it to the brim with steaming black coffee.

B smiles prettily and leans on his elbows, hunching forward and mirroring L's expression, relearning his role as a reflection. "And I lo -"

L taps his fingers on the tabletop, glancing at the clock. "When do you think he'll get here?" he says. The sun is stalking the horizon, wrapping grabby hands around the landscape that shivers and blooms through the windowpanes.

The words wither on B's lips, and he can taste the stain of his youthful emptiness, the clawing desire to have and be had, know and be known. It feels like he's been chopped down the middle, even though his other half is right there.

"You invited someone else?" he asks vaguely, flicking at packets of sugar for a distraction.

L slumps back in his seat. "More like he invited himself. He goes wherever I go now. It should be a bother, but it's not, really."

B cocks his head, knows exactly what he means. "Not like me?"

"No, L says, heaving a forkful that is mostly syrup into his mouth, "he's really nothing like you."

* * *

**three.**

Light makes a real entrance. He's dirty and worn down and the golden glow of dawn follows him in the front door, the bell above it knocked ringing with his entrance. The waitress flutters her eyes at him and tries to strike up a conversation, but he doesn't seem to notice, just nods somewhat drunkenly toward the table that L and B occupy and says, "I'm with him," like there's only one person there.

He sits down next to L and doesn't look at B when he says, "I thought it would just be us."

"I never alluded to any such thing," L responds, snapping his fingers for more coffee, snobbish and belligerent and appearing unaware of either of the traits.

"It was implicit," Light says, turning his best and brightest smile on the waitress as she serves him.

"Funny," B says, lolling sideways until the ends of his unkempt hair brush the table, sweeping around loose crystals of sugar, "I was under the same impression." He picks up a few granules of sugar with the thin sheen of sickly sweat that's been layering him for the past few hours and licks it off, not only ignoring propriety but purposefully rejecting it.

L shifts facetiously in his seat. "By all means, I can leave you two alone if you'd like."

As if it were prearranged, Light and B both shift their eyes to him dully and say, "No," in rough unison, then glare adamantly across the table at one another a moment later.

L shrugs, slumping further in his seat and blinking out the window, the pale sunlight making the day feel empty, endless. "I don't think we need to worry unduly about who is the third wheel for much longer," he says, then looks to Light. "If you're here, I'm sure I know who won't be far behind."

Light pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. "Only if I'm very, very unlucky."

* * *

**four.**

It's midday when the last of the party arrives, the attendance cap at their booth finally met. Misa is better dressed than all of them put together, looks like she's heading to funeral rather than a diner, walking in on her high, high heels and smiling softly with her glinting lips.

She looks like a porcelain doll. No one is happy to see her.

The waitress barely acknowledges her as she seats herself across from Light, flicking her hair over her shoulder and swiping B across the face in the process. He doesn't seem to mind, resting his chin on his palm and looking Misa up and down with writhing eyes.

He says, "Are you a killer, too, pretty?"

She looks over at him like she's just noticed he's there, thick, false lashes fluttering against her cheeks. "Excuse _you_. You're not supposed to ask a lady things like that."

Light puts his fingers to his temples. "No, you're thinking of age."

"Don't tell her what to think, Light," L says, the corner of his mouth turning up, before taking a bite from his second order of pancakes.

Misa rolls her eyes. "Don't tell him what to do, Ryuzaki." It feels just like old times, except rather than the pulsing race against the clock, the constant tango around the truth, there is only this: time and the sun and cup upon cup of coffee.

"Yes?" B asks, leaning closer to Misa, eyes bugging out in his study of her.

"Ew, what?" Misa snaps, but she's not leaning away.

"You said one of my names." He signals the waitress for more coffee and as she's pouring it, he gestures Misa towards it. "Want some?"

She shakes her head, expression changing abruptly from concentrative to empty and pleasant. She bats her eyes at the waitress. "Just a soda for me, please. Cherry?" She turns back to B. "One of your names? A person can only have one. It's a rule. Right, Light?"

Light is leaning with his heading in hand, swirling his spoon pointlessly through the remains of his coffee. He shrugs. "I've never seen it written."

B grins, slinks down in his seat. "I don't believe in rules, anyway." His foot is climbing L's leg, curling around the dip on the back of his knee, up his thigh, covering his lap. Misa's cherry soda is set down with a glassy clink. The waitress's footsteps as she pads away don't make a sound.

"That doesn't mean a thing," L says, knocking B's toes away from the zip of his trousers. "I don't believe in the afterlife, and yet here we are."

"That's not what this is," Light says, sitting up straighter, suddenly alert. His eyes jolt to L's lap and the beast he is wrangling casually off of it, and he grits his teeth and looks quickly away. "It's more like purgatory."

"That's still the afterlife," L counters.

"Eh," B says, twirling a bit of Misa's hair with his freehand, which she snatches away from him as soon as she notices. "I'd call it 'between lives,' personally."

"Well, I don't care where we are," Misa announces loudly, sipping from her soda, "just as long Light's here, I'm happy." Her lipstick matches the color of her drink exactly and it's hard to tell if the cosmos had aligned it like that or if it's simply a coincidence - if coincidence is even possible in this place.

As Light rolls his eyes, B leans forward across the tables with a dreamy, melodramatic look. "Me, too," he says, silky and mocking. He's still playing footsie with L.

Light doesn't acknowledge him, but as L begins to open his mouth, he snaps, "If you say it, too, I'm getting up and walking out of here."

"I don't know how that's supposed to discourage me." L grins, licking syrup from his fingers. He doesn't say it, though. "I honestly don't think you could, anyway. The door's gone."

They all turn to look, but without particular fervor or concern. There is a strange calm, an acceptance, the last stage of grief settling over them like the slow drape of night. There is nothing frightening or violent about this place, none of the falling, running, or jumping of life's tremulous chaos. It's calm here.

They are all the wrong people, but they seem to have ended up in the right place. The waitress isn't here anymore, the diner empty but for their rowdy booth, and the scenery outside looks flat, like a backdrop in an old film. The whole of the setting could fall away it probably wouldn't matter.

B shrugs, climbing over the back of their booth onto the next one, then hopping down to pad across to the counter. "More coffee, anyone?"

"If we're waiting for the gates to heaven to open up to us," L mumbles, flicking at his lip errantly with a long, crooked finger, "you'd better make another pot."

* * *

**end.**


End file.
